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Students cautious, coaching centres register decline in enrolment Life in recession

Deepa Kurup

Only 55,000 take GRE in 2008; it was 74,000 in 2007

No major dip in enrolments for CAT 2009 coaching
‘Many applicants wanted to pay fees in instalments’

A file picture of a coaching centre.

BANGALORE: Seats in coaching centres until recently were in great demand. With the recession setting in, coaching centres are seeing a significant dip in enrolment, especially for training courses and consultation services for studying abroad.

Over the last year, leading coaching institutes in the country have seen a dip of about 30 per cent in their enrolments for Graduate Record Examination (GRE), used as a benchmark for U.S. admissions.

Official figures for GRE in 2008 confirm this: takers for GRE have gone down from 74,000 in 2007 to 55,000 in 2008.

While there is no significant dip in enrolments for coaching for the Common Aptitude Test (CAT) 2009 yet — most coaching centres say that it is a growing segment — early trends so far can be termed “flat”.

IMS Learning Centre, a leading coaching institute, has seen a 25 per cent dip in its GRE market.

“The picture isn’t clear yet. But the number of students opting to study abroad is down. Given the market uncertainty, people are being cautious,” said G. Gopinath of IMS.

IMS holds a significant portion of the GMAT (Graduate Management Aptitude Test) market, and enrolments in 2008 (applicants for fall 2009) were decent, he says. “However, in the coming year we expect GMAT enrolments to come down significantly. Also, these figures may not really translate into admissions as these scores are valid for five years,” Mr. Gopinath added.

Fall in numbers

IELTS and TOEFL classes have also seen a fall in numbers. Many are deterred by a 20 to 25 per cent increase in tuition fees in foreign universities in 2008 owing to the increase in foreign exchange rate.

Jeevan Kumar, a software engineer, said that increased fees, decreasing job options abroad, and the uncertain market, made him postpone his plans to pursue postgraduate studies in the U.S.

“Companies are reluctant to give us leave to study for these examinations. My friend, who works in a financial company, almost lost his job for taking a week’s leave to study for CAT,” he said.

Jaideep Singh Chowdhary, product manager at the Triumphant Institute of Management Education (TIME), a coaching institute, said that the institute had registered a 30 per cent fall in overseas education and counselling. Courses related to soft skills and job placement-related training also find themselves in a trough.

“Given that placements in colleges are low, both our own programmes and those we conduct on campuses have not met with as much response as last year’s,” Mr. Chowdhary said.

CAT

The CAT market, experts say, grows by a little more than 20 per cent every year.

A counsellor in a mid-size coaching institute in Bangalore has seen a 25 per cent dip in enrolments for CAT-2009, and roughly 50 per cent reduction in queries for overseas education. “Smaller institutes will find less response, but it could swing both ways. Drop in BPO recruitments from commerce colleges could push more of them towards management options, and even working professionals may see this as a low opportunity cost period,” he explained on condition of anonymity.

Payment pattern

Shiv Kumar, director of Career Launcher, says that though people may not stop coming for training courses for IIT-JEE or CAT, there is a change in approach in the mode of payment they are opting for.

“We usually collect one-time payment on our courses. This year several applicants requested us to collect the fees in instalments,” he said.

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